Xperience This!

So I’m a little late jumping onto the New Year prediction band wagon.  And maybe I cheated a little because my prediction is actually based on what’s already happened in the first couple of weeks of the year. Nevertheless, you heard it here first – 2010 is the Year of the Experience.  This will be the year where Experience Design (XD) becomes widely understood and embraced as a competitive advantage for businesses.  The evidence: Domino’s Pizza’s new ad campaign and Steve Kroft ’s January 10th 60 Minutes story about a multi-billion dollar border security project gone bad. More »

Self promotion is not the intent of this blog, but this accomplishment is notable for a couple of reasons we think our current and prospective clients might find interesting.  What is especially noteworthy about this accomplishment is that ours was an AZ Technology/IS-sponsored study that ended up receiving recognition from the business for the value of its Commercial Insights. Some quick background…

Astra Zeneca presents its Accoladez awards every year to brand teams and partners who produce work that provides the biggest breakthrough in how to communicate about a brand or to address a difficult brand challenge. It recognizes a key finding in market research as well as a unique methodology used to uncover a transformational insight regarding customer behavior.  Accoladez is highly coveted among the Brand teams and the competition is quite fierce.

Our Experience Design group recently won finalist status in the category of Commercial Insight for the Physician Experience Research Study we completed in early 2009.  Our work was recognized because it provided the basis and firsthand validation of what Primary Care and GI Specialists were looking for from the Digital channel, both from a preference and behavioral standpoint.

The study sought to understand how physicians use the digital space in the context of treating their patients. It included detailed 1:1 interviews with over 50 physicians in two cities – the highlight of the research was the “day in the life” diaries we asked physicians to complete to track their digital activities. The goal was to get at what physicians’ digital behaviors REALLY are versus what they claim they are in self-reported surveys or large-scale reports. We wanted to answer the “how” and “why” of physician behavior, not solely the “what.” The insights we gathered helped AZ stakeholders both in digital and traditional channels prioritize communications and tactics.

We think this recognition speaks volumes about the value of having a non-agency with no agenda to push for any particular marketing communications tactics doing this type of research. It frees the partnering vendor to call it as they see it and focus on creating value for the client.

Note: This post is an abridged version of Jerilyn’s whitepaper called Why Personas Matter.

So many times when I start a presentation on personas and the value they bring to any organization (whether it is a development team, a creative design team, or yes – even a marketing team), the push back I face is the perception that personas are really just “fluff” that cannot enable decisions and effect the bottom line.  In my experience, that is just not the case.  I have seen great products fail because the product engineers started with a set of cool features and later looked for a customer segment that might use them.  I have also seen mediocre products succeed because instead of building a segment around the product, the team started with a set of individual people, trying to accomplish specific tasks… and then built a product that could help them accomplish their goals.  

How did personas help them do that?  Simple – they were based on research and facts (not archetypes or assumptions) and focused on behaviors, not segmentation data that represents how the business views its customers instead of how customers view themselves. More »